Books in Brief: Nonfiction

Rituals of Identity

By CHRISTINE SCHWARTZ HARTLEY

Published: February 23, 1997

It's the first day of summer, and skinny children with jet black hair tumble down a sand dune; wearing a tattered lace dress, with a bouquet and a grinning skull mask, a little girl celebrates her first Communion; a dark-skinned boy squints mischievously, his face buried in the soft wings of a white chicken; barefoot in the Sonoran Desert, a boy balances on a cheap mountain bike while a ragged princess -- his sister? -- stands by his side. Because their lives so vividly embody the notions that preoccupy the Mexican photographer Graciela Iturbide -- the tensions between the traditional culture of Mexican villages and Northern modernity; the resilience, adaptability and capacity for happiness of Mexican communities bound by family, work and seasonal customs; the wonder and strength of Mexico's syncretic religious rituals -- images of children abound in her IMAGES OF THE SPIRIT (Aperture, $40). In these black-and-white photographs, taken over the last two decades and presented in her first major publication in the United States, still lifes are rare. Indeed, whether depicting her subjects from afar, lost in Mexico's dramatic landscapes -- like the two small human figures, one of them on crutches, walking toward an ancient temple in ''Calzada de los Muertos'' (''Pathway of the Dead'') -- or from up close (like the young woman smiling softly as she breast-feeds her baby in a hammock), Ms. Iturbide seems to favor finding beauty in the various forms of human life. Informed by the notions that haunt her, Ms. Iturbide's definition of beauty in Mexican communities is complex -- in turn violent, spiritual, joyous, tense or tender -- and it always has to do with dignity, the dignity of a ritual performed, a bond asserted, an identity worn with pride. Christine Schwartz Hartley

Photo: ''Magnolia,'' Juchitan, Oaxaca, 1986, a photograph by Graciela Iturbide from ''Images of the Spirit.''